Episode 1180: Interest, Importance, and Priorities - Money

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,180 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:06] Eric Winters: I'm Eric Winters. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to find your best self is key.

[00:00:23] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:31] Scott Maderer: But of course that's presuming that you did a budget and had a plan. Which sometimes in fact often isn't true. We're not going through that planning phase. And therefore reflecting always ends up being a moment of guilt and a moment of beating yourself in retrospect, instead of actually a learning opportunity so that you can change your behavior and do something different in the future.

[00:00:58] Welcome and thank you for joining us [00:01:00] on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your I.

[00:01:20] So that you can impact the world

[00:01:24] in today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about how the three prongs of interest importance and priority help make decisions about our money. I talked about what each of those means and doesn't mean. And I also talk about how understanding how your relationship with money is governed by these helps you reflect and plan according.

[00:01:46] As we talk about stewarding your treasures. Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself, an extra dime turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired [00:02:00] stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show.

[00:02:08] If you enjoy the show, when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. This week, we've been talking about this idea of interest important and priorities. And today I wanted to focus on those three concepts and ideas and how they affect our decision making around money.

[00:02:31] See just like time and relationships. I think a lot of times we just make decisions with our money based on. Convenience based on urgency, based on comfort, based on all sorts of things that have to do with just what's going on at that moment to in time and recognizing that. There are things that we're interested in that have importance of that have priority that affect our money becomes [00:03:00] important.

[00:03:00] And there's kind of two prongs. When you think about how things affect your money, there's both the income side and there's the expense or outgo side. And these three things, this interest importance and priority affects both sides of. know, One of the activities that I've had people do when they look at their budget, when they look at their spending side, they look at the expense side is go through there and say, which of these things are most important to you, which of these things align most with your values, with the things that you find are important.

[00:03:35] And then once you've identified those of these, which one. Are the most important, which ones would you do first? Which ones would you do? Second, if you ran out of money today, which ones would you try to do first with the money that did come in? If you had $0 coming in, what would you do with the first dollar that came in the second, the third, the fourth and so on, you can also look at your [00:04:00] money and the expenses with the same sort of filter and think about interest in terms of which of these things actually.

[00:04:07] Lend themselves and you're doing them because they catch your attention. They're interesting to you, not necessarily the most important, not necessarily the best, because what's funny is sometimes we spend money on things that are interesting and I'm gonna use that loosely because they come and they create their own sense of attention and urgency.

[00:04:28] If you're getting a call over and over again from a credit card company, you may pay that credit card company. Even when it's not yet the most important thing to do not because I'm saying you should duck out on your debts, but because sometimes you need to pay something else first so that you can get yourself in a good position to actually be able to pay the credit card company.

[00:04:50] What they. Get and what they deserve. So it's interest here, not just in terms of, oh, that's interesting to me. Maybe I'm spending money on cable [00:05:00] TV when I really don't have it, but it's also interest from the point of view of what creates its own sense of urgency or in intention. And what makes you have to feel like I have to pay this now.

[00:05:13] One of the ways to think about your expenses is anytime you're using phrases, like I have to, it's usually a problem, but you can also think about these three filters from the point of view of the income side, see often things that are creating income. What is the priority? Which things are creating. The best income, which things are in most connection to your values, which things are of the most interest to you.

[00:05:42] And where are you putting the importance? Are you making sure that you're making an income, but you're also putting importance on things that maybe aren't directly income producing and you're thinking logically and carefully about the trade offs between them are again, are you simply. [00:06:00] Allowing the life to happen to you instead of you happening to the life.

[00:06:04] This filter allows us to, to sometimes identify new opportunities, cuz here's the thing. If someone else finds something interesting that you also find interesting, if someone else puts an importance on. If someone else sees something as a priority that could conceivably be an area where you can ju use and generate income, maybe a skillset that you don't even think of as an income producing skillset could be turned into one because others view things with interest, importance, and priority as.

[00:06:41] so you can use this filter on both sides to think about your relationship with money. See if you're spending the money in a way that is most effective and efficient for you seeing if you're spending the money in a way that is most aligned with your values, and then do the same thinking on the income [00:07:00] side, are you generating income in a way that is in alignment with your values?

[00:07:05] Are you able to do. And still put interest and importance in the other areas of your life. If you think about it, these three things that we've talked about this week, this interest importance and priorities in terms of relationships, in terms of values, in terms of time, in terms of money. overlay all of your life, but only if you think about them intentionally only if, when you're looking at where you're spending money, you're not just looking at it after the fact and saying here's what happened, but you're actually planning in advance.

[00:07:39] You're doing a budget. You're making these decisions ahead of time. Cuz often when we make the decisions in the heat of the moment, There's a problem. But when we actually are deliberate in our relationships in our time and in our money and make these decisions in advance, then we make better decisions.

[00:07:58] That's what a [00:08:00] budget is for. And then of course you have to actually look at what happened and then reflect on what happened and why did it happen? I've had people that have wildly overspent on an area of their budget. But the first question before they begin to beat themselves up is why did it happen?

[00:08:17] Was it a behavior problem or was it a budget problem? If you've got a family of nine and you plan on spending $250 in a month for food, that's probably not enough money. It might be, but only in some really unique situations, usually it's not. So that would be a budget problem, not a behavior problem. On the other hand, if you put down a hundred dollars for fun money and then you go out and you pay for going out to eat with all of your friends and you don't actually think about it, you simply just do it.

[00:08:48] And you end up spending four or five or $600 in fund money. That could be more of a behavior problem. That could be something where you are making decisions in the [00:09:00] moment that aren't reflecting the values, the priorities, the importance, and the interest that you looked at your money when you did the plan.

[00:09:08] But of course, that's presuming that you did a budget and had a. which sometimes in fact often isn't true. We're not going through that planning phase. And therefore reflecting always ends up being a moment of guilt and a moment of beating yourself in retrospect, instead of actually a learning opportunity so that you could change your behavior and do something different in the future.

[00:09:34] Thanks for listening.

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